There has been a lot of talk in the marketplace on the best ways to attract new patients. Do you use direct mail, e-mail, social media, yellow page ads, speaking, and the list goes on and on.
As you are well aware, our society is undergoing massive changes. These changes began to take shape in the early 1980’s and have gained momentum and today one could argue that our society isn’t at all the same as it was just a mere 30 years ago.
This is important to understand because your patients and your potential patients are today finding the doctors they will trust very differently then in the past.
To give you an illustration, outside of your industry to make it easier to understand, I’ll use my own business as an example. For many, many years, people could make fortunes with direct mail (also known as mail order) businesses.
The owners were rarely if ever in the public eye, and you might not even know the name of the company you were buying from. Since this was the norm, nobody questioned it.
Today, everybody is in the public eye, and running a nameless, faceless business is no longer an option. What has changed is that through technology, we have become much more connected and we’re quick to share any and all bad experiences with a company or professional we’ve done business with.
What that means to you is that you can no longer be a doctor who is unknown in your community and expect to simply place an ad in the Yellow Pages and fill up your practice.
What you need to look for are new ways of having your existing patients refer their friends and family to you. You need to be seen in your community as a doctor who is a leader, instead of being just another faceless professional behind glass doors.
Some things to consider for yourself is creating content that positions you as the authority on a topic or topics of your choosing. This could be as simple as creating a few videos that are posted on your web site. You could write a short book (or a long one!). You could be a guest speaker at local events. Or you could be a guest on the local “morning show” on your local cable channel.
The point is that you can’t build a waiting-list-only practice hiding behind the sign on your front door. The time for that has long passed. Today, you need to be visible, engaged, and you must be seen as the person with the answers your potential patients are searching for.
This is how it’s done in today’s society.
Be outstanding!
Robert Imbriale
‘The Motivational Marketer’